Book Review: Save the Date by Morgan Matson + Pictures from her Huntington Beach event!

Charlie Grant’s older sister is getting married this weekend at their family home, and Charlie can’t wait—for the first time in years, all four of her older siblings will be under one roof. Charlie is desperate for one last perfect weekend, before the house is sold and everything changes. The house will be filled with jokes and games and laughs again. Making decisions about things like what college to attend and reuniting with longstanding crush Jesse Foster—all that can wait. She wants to focus on making the weekend perfect.

GENRE:

Young Adult, Contemporary

PAGES:

432 pages

PART OF A SERIES?:

Standalone Novel

RELEASE DATE:

June 5th 2018

YOU CAN FIND THE BOOK AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR THE FOLLOWING LINKS:

GOODREADS SUMMARY:

Charlie Grant’s older sister is getting married this weekend at their family home, and Charlie can’t wait—for the first time in years, all four of her older siblings will be under one roof. Charlie is desperate for one last perfect weekend, before the house is sold and everything changes. The house will be filled with jokes and games and laughs again. Making decisions about things like what college to attend and reuniting with longstanding crush Jesse Foster—all that can wait. She wants to focus on making the weekend perfect.

The only problem? The weekend is shaping up to be an absolute disaster.

There’s the unexpected dog with a penchant for howling, house alarm that won’t stop going off, and a papergirl with a grudge.

There are the relatives who aren’t speaking, the (awful) girl her favorite brother brought home unannounced, and a missing tuxedo.

Not to mention the neighbor who seems to be bent on sabotage and a storm that is bent on drenching everything. The justice of the peace is missing. The band will only play covers. The guests are all crazy. And the wedding planner’s nephew is unexpectedly, distractingly…cute.

Over the course of three ridiculously chaotic days, Charlie will learn more than she ever expected about the family she thought she knew by heart. And she’ll realize that sometimes, trying to keep everything like it was in the past means missing out on the future.

MY REVIEW

There is a huge reason that I loved this story and it boils down to one thing: family. This story is so hugely about family and if you know me even in the slightest, you know that family is incredibly important to me…mostly with my five younger siblings, the five most important people in the world to me. Reading a story about a big family in the point of view from a character that finds her family to be the most important thing to her felt so familiar and so fun. The inside jokes, the stories, the embarrassing moments, the fights, the struggle to be heard in a big family, all of it…it felt so familiar and it made me a little nostalgic and sad because I’ve been out of my house for a little over a year now and its been great but I miss that chaos all the time and I miss my siblings all the time. I can completely understand how Charlie feels and how badly she just wants everyone to be under the same roof again but its such a hard thing to make happen. Plus I seriously loved every single one of her siblings, and how dynamic and fleshed out they were, how they were each their own character and how even though they were nothing like my siblings, they still reminded me of how different and yet the same a group of siblings can be.

I can also understand Siobhan’s frustration with Charlie’s obsession with her family and Charlie’s inability to change and move on because I was very much like charlie in a different way though. I have taken care of my siblings for years and felt for years that I had a responsibility to them, to take care of them and always be there for them. I always felt that I could not leave them. It took a long time to earn my independence and so I felt a big connection with Charlie as she fought against everything that would bring change in her life. Usually teen novels tend to have the main character(s) thrust into big changes and events and they struggle with it, but they usually still move forward. Charlie is refreshing as a character because she is literally running away from everything new, including college. She is terrified of moving forward and I think that can be a familiar feeling, no matter what age you are, and I really appreciated that in her.

Lastly, this book was just seriously insanely fun. Morgan quotes often that the book was influenced by Father of the Bride and you can definitely see that. There are so many antics and funny moments and just when you think, okay, honestly, there really can’t be anymore that could go wrong, of course it goes completely wrong. The house alarm, the unexpected dog, the unexpected sibling, the neighbor with a serious vendetta, the rehearsal dinner decorations, the wrong wedding band and so on. I was cracking up because it just seemed like everything was going wrong but they kept pushing forward and finding things to laugh at and it was just such a great and fun book. I especially liked the tie-in of the comic about the family, the one that Charlie’s mom writes, and how there were actual drawn comics in the book. It just added so much and made the book even better.

I always like a good Morgan Matson book and I can’t wait for more in the future. Its been a wait since the last book and this is definitely worth the wait.

RATING:

5 out of 5 Stars

Huntington Beach Event

I was able to attend Morgan’s event in Huntington Beach back at the end of June and it was such fun. She read a part of the book, talked about writing and reading and brought donuts and signed books. Here are a few picture from the event!

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Hello! My name is Sara. I am 32 years old, Mexican-Irish, short, liberal, tattooed, loud, proudly bisexual, and a total cat lady. I love reading, writing, eating cupcakes, watching baseball, listening to music, binging all the good TV stuff and running. I live in Southern California physically but my mind is always in a fictional place. My debut novel, The Awakened, was released in December of 2015, and was my first successful NaNoWriMo novel. The sequel, The Sanctuary was published January 2017. I am currently working on a young adult fantasy called Legacy. Welcome to my blog!

**The above picture was taken in February of 2020 in Forks, Washington, the town in which Twilight takes place.**